The Microsoft Windows Search Assistant provides users with a single, unified search experience across different types of searches. It is a task-based searching tool that allows users to specify the type of information they are looking for instead of the search engine they want to use. The Search Assistant opens in the Search bar in the left side of the browser when the user clicks the Search button.
You can customize the Search bar to suit the needs of your organization. To do so, you specify the URL for the Search bar on the Important URLs screen in Stage 4 of the Internet Explorer Customization wizard.
The Search bar can be customized using the same functionality that is possible in the Internet Explorer browser. This includes JScript (compatible with ECMA 262 language specification), Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), ActiveX controls, Dynamic HTML, framesets, cascading style sheets (CSS), and so on.
The search results typically appear in the Search bar. It's critical for users to be able to easily use the results of any search service. You can use the Search bar functionality to store detailed information such as text abstracts, URLs, or file size. This information is contained in the ToolTips that appear when the mouse pointer hovers over a result. This helps keep the results page simple and provides detailed information when needed.
For information about customizing the Search Assistant, see the rest of this topic. For information about dimensions, design, and functionality, see The Search Bar User Interface. For information about the automatic search feature, which enables users to type search phrases into the Address bar, see Configuring Automatic Search. For more information about scripting and Dynamic HTML, see the Microsoft Site Builder Network Workshop.
The Search Assistant can be customized to meet specific searching needs. For example, additional information about search results can be stored within ToolTips, and search results can be highlighted on a particular Web page.
Building customized Search Guides to search Web pages for a word or phrase is easy in Internet Explorer 5. The new NavigateAndFind method loads a specified Web page and scans the document for a match to the provided string. If a match is made, the string in the document is highlighted.
The following example opens the Microsoft Web site and searches for the words "Microsoft Corporation."
window.external.NavigateAndFind("http://www.microsoft.com","Microsoft Corporation");
To help conserve space in the browser window and to improve the readability of search results, Internet Explorer enables you to define the specific information about a given link that should be included in a ToolTip. You do this by defining the TITLE= attribute of an HTML anchor tag.
The following example provides more information about the link:
<A href="http://www.acme-sports.com" TITLE="Latest sports news and scores,
updated hourly. Interviews with winning players">
acme-sports - Latest sports news</A>
Point to this link to see how the results would appear: Latest sports news
The ToolTip automatically breaks lines at three inches and can contain at least a paragraph of text. However, no more than 1,024 characters are allowed within the ToolTip text. You can also force a new line or tab spaces in the abstract by using the reserved characters and 
 for carriage return and line feed, and 	 for tab spaces.
The following example includes a carriage return and a line feed after line 1 of the ToolTip:
<A href="http://www.microsoft.com"
TITLE="The text that will be displayed on line1
The text that will be displayed on line2
	The text that will be displayed on line3
	The text that will be displayed on line4">
Using multiple lines in ToolTips</A>
Point to this link to see how the results would appear: Using multiple lines in ToolTips